4/1/2026 HOUSE: THE MUSICAL Princeton University Streaming Service
LAURIE’S LEGACY
As if y’all didn’t know, House was a series that ran for eight seasons on Fox starting in 2004. It starred Hugh Laurie (Jeeves and Wooster) as an acerbic but brilliant diagnostician at Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital who marshalled his team of assistants on cases of rare and unusual diseases. Modelled on the Sherlock Holmes paradigm, Dr. House used observation and deduction to conclude the root cause(s) of whatever odd symptom(s) highlighted the “case of the week.” The primary joy of the series was Laurie’s portrayal of a brilliant man fighting demons and rules and the entire medical ethos. He was over-the-edge abusive to everyone but still managed to keep viewers coming back week after week to see him save lives and ruin friendships.
I was late to the game, just starting to watch it last year, going on multi-episode binges with my lovely and patient spouse (who finally succeeded in turning me on to the show). And, like most of America before me, I am loving it.
So of course, even though we’re only on season 7, I had the opportunity to screen a new video of a musical version, House: The Musical. It will be “dropped” onto the (overpriced) Princeton University Streaming Service (see link below) starting next week. Oddly, I was sent a “screener copy” based on my Atlanta Theatre Buzz credentials and had the pleasure of watching it three times already. For the record, my House-loving spouse could not make it through once. But I loved it.
It takes three episodes from the first season and adds Broadway-caliber songs that are funny, moving, and ear-wormy toe-tappingly memorable. And it has populated it with a cast that, at first glance, seems so wrong, but (in the final analysis) is so right.
The show starts with an under-the-main-titles production number featuring the entire cast (“Physician Heal Thyself”), in an energetically choreographed spectacle through which a frowning Gregory House MD (brilliantly played by Nathan Lane) hobbles in perfect time and without tripping over the chorus of orderlies, nurses, and patients who exhibit gruesome disfigurements and oozing sores. It shouldn’t work, it should be gross, but it is strangely elegant and beautiful.
It immediately segues into the hospital’s clinic, where Dr. House diagnoses dozens of patients with a preposterously rapid patter song that would make Gilbert and Sullivan blush (or win any contemporary Free Style battle). (On one of my viewings, I had Closed Caption turned on, which gave up half-way through the number and just displayed [Rapidly Listed Medical Terms] on the screen.)
We are soon introduced to the Director of the Medical Center, Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Megan Hilty) whom House is constantly (and inappropriately) ogling (their duet “The Unbearable Appeal of Cuddy’s Boobs” is both aggressively misogynistic and sweetly tender). She has brought him three cases. The gimmick here is that all three patients are played by Daniel Radcliffe in various detail-character-specific make-ups. In one he is a monk with odd rashes (changed from a nun in the original series). In another, he is aa high-schooler who collapses during sex. Finally, he is a legendary Jazz musician who may (or may not) have ALS. All three cases interweave throughout the show (unlike the series which focused on one case per episode), and all climax with the recurring song “It’s Never Lupus.” (Except {spoiler alert} one of them is, again, straying from the original episode.)
We also meet House’s best Friend (?) and sounding board / whipping boy, the Oncologist Dr. James Wilson (Leo Norbert Butz) whose wistful ballad “Isn’t it Bromantic?” is a mid-Act I show-stopper. As to House’s team, they are Dr. Alison Cameron (Cynthia Erivo), still obsessing over her dead husband’s contribution to a potential In-Vitro fertilization (“A Sploogey Love Song”), Dr. Robert Chase (Timothée Chalamet) who skillfully maintains an Aussie accent that is NEVER reminiscent of Dylan (“My Outback Outbreak Outing”), and Dr. Eric Foreman (Lin-Manuel Miranda, who, incidentally, was also in the original series) who raps a meta-recognition that his name matches that of a character on That 70’s Show “- Am I really Omar or Am I Topher?”).
Oh, for the record, I must also commend several cameos by Justin Timberlake as nurses on the receiving end of House’s abuse and lack-of-respect. Although each is a different gender, ethnicity, and age, all have the recurring leitmotif (“I’m Going to H.R.”), amusingly reminiscent of the “Skidmarks on My Heart” moments from the Go-Go’s / Sir Philip Sidney musical Head Over Heels.
And, because there are three separate cases, we get to hear “The Look,” an instrumental vamp (with off-screen voices chanting “He Knows He Knows He Knows”) three times, at different points, in different contexts, with different tempos, and in different styles. This is an aggressively eclectic score (which, curiously remains anonymous, though I suspect Lin-Manuel had a hand in much of it).
But, for my money, the highlight of the show is House’s solo “The Vicodin Tango,” in which he goes into a deep emotional self-analysis of his work, his cynicism, his attraction to Dr. Cuddy and his addiction to Vicodin, expressing all five levels of grief until ending with a queasy and not-too-easy acceptance. That Nathan Lane can navigate such an intricate emotional maelstrom without missing a beat of the brilliant choreography is a testament to his skill and charisma. In a sane universe, this performance would be Emmy material. (A Tony may be right out, because I don’t think this show would ever work on stage, logistics being a cruel (but not impossible hint-hint-hint).task mistress.
So, the strengths of House: The Musical are its cast, its score, and especially its sketched-in-acid (or is that Vicodin?) portrait of a genius, of a man obsessed with saving lives and with upsetting apple carts. Its memorable characters do full justice to their broadcast antecedents, in spite of the canon variations in the libretto.
For the record, if you don’t have the final anthem (“Everybody Lies”) stuck in your head for days, you just may be suffering from a complicated collection of brain ailments. Just not Lupus.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com #HouseTheMusical #PrincetonStreamingService
If you are independently wealthy, you could do worse than the Princeton Streaming Service. It may be pricey ($300/per month) but it includes thousands of hours of lectures and interactive post-graduate-level content. Including all episodes of the original House. Just remind me to cancel before that first month’s subscription hits my account. Click Here for a Preview.